Dave McNeely: Abortion has long, contentious history in Texas ... and it continues

The recent flap in the Legislature’s special session was capped by a 13-hour filibuster on the final day, June 25, that successfully stalled the vote on an anti-abortion bill until after the midnight deadline.

While the Capitol was packed with mostly pro-choice women chanting and cheering, Fort Worth Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis and Senate Democrats killing the bill heavily favored by Republican legislators and leaders again underlined that abortion is a continuingly hot political topic.

In Texas, it has long been contentious. These days, it’s probably close to impossible for someone who is pro-choice to win a Republican primary.

It is almost as difficult to win a Democratic primary if you oppose a woman’s right to choose — unless you’re in heavily Hispanic areas where the predominantly Catholic denomination opposes abortions.

Republican antipathy to abortion, and even birth control, wasn’t always there. The first President George Bush (41, father of 43, George W.) for instance, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in the late 1960s, carried on the cause of his mother and father that population control was necessary.

Bush’s dad, Prescott Bush, who spent two terms in the U.S. Senate from Connecticut, and mom Dorothy, were early leaders in population control — including trying to change Connecticut’s law prohibiting birth control. Their movement later became Planned Parenthood.

During George Bush’s four years in the U.S. House (1967-1971), he helped lead efforts to outlaw bans against contraceptives, and to gain federal funding for family planning services. He was so ardent about it that House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills nicknamed him “Rubbers.”

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its Roe v Wade decision, struck down Texas’ and other state laws that unduly limited the right of a woman and her doctor to decide whether she would carry a pregnancy to term.

For the next 16 years, the whole issue of abortion was sort of a political free-fire zone. Politicians who were so inclined, and thought it could help them, periodically introduced bills to limit abortions.

To objectors, they could say it didn’t really matter, because, you know, Roe vs. Wade. No state law would have any impact anyway. It was a political free ride, and several politicians took it. Their attempts usually didn’t get far. Consensus-minded legislative leaders wanted to keep them off the House or Senate floor, and usually did. All those proposals would do, they thought, was result in a dramatic and painful legislative sideshow that would “cut up” legislative members. No matter how they voted, it could hurt them come election time.

But in 1989, in Webster v Reproductive Health Services, a Supreme Court with five different justices upheld a Missouri law that restricted using state funds, facilities and employees in performing, assisting with or counseling on abortions.

It was a backpedal from Roe v Wade, since it basically allowed states to write laws concerning abortions in ways previously thought banned.

All of a sudden, the politicians who had considered right-to-life bills a freebie — a no-risk endeavor — realized that things had changed. Any laws they passed at the state or federal level could have realistic consequences in limiting or making it more difficult for women to exercise choice.

Within a few weeks, two of the four major candidates seeking the Republican nomination for governor in 1990 had tempered the right-to-life positions.

But over the past two decades, as Republicans have stormed to political dominance of Texas, limiting abortions has become a litmus test in Republican primaries.

There are a few ironies in these efforts to not only limit a woman’s ability to terminate a pregnancy, but also to close birth-control counseling places like Planned Parenthood.

One is that in the heavy-handed process of working to shut down Planned Parenthood in Texas because some of their facilities are associated with abortions is that the number of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies will go up, not down.

And that means that the cost to the public will go up, not down. This is a state that ranks very high in the number of births to teenagers.

Yet another irony is that, as pro-choice lawmakers point out, many of the same folks who adamantly want to limit a woman’s control over her body, on grounds they value the life of the fetus, also will oppose paying taxes for the health care and education of those fetuses after they’re born.

This saga obviously wasn’t over. Republican Gov. Rick Perry only waited about as long as Sen. Davis had filibustered to call another special session, which began Monday, on abortion and other issues that died in the first one.